With the 2025 offseason beginning for the New Jersey Devils and their organization, there’s been a big rumor going around surrounding the Devils, the Vancouver Canucks and Quinn Hughes. After Jim Rutherford's comments about Quinn Hughes saying keeping him could be out of their hands, Devils fans and media quickly discussed the idea that Tom Fitzgerald could acquire Quinn Hughes to play with both his brothers here in New Jersey.
While there is a bunch of speculation about a possible trade, there was one mock trade by Hall of Fame New York Post writer Larry Brooks made last week that has to get talked about. While you could argue the aspects of the deal, like maybe Seamus Casey and Dawson Mercer, there are two significant parts of this trade that cannot happen: trading Arseni Grityuk and Simon Nemec away.
The agreement that Brooks came up with for the Devils to acquire Quinn Hughes includes trading defenseman Anton Silyaev or recently signed rookie forward Aresni Gritsyuk, one of defenseman Simon Nemec or forward Seamus Casey, a first-round pick, and Dawson Mercer.
Trading away Simon Nemec would make no sense, especially after his playoff performance against the Hurricanes in the first round of the 2025 playoffs. In the regular season, Nemec was criticized for his bad performance when he wanted to be in the lineup, but he got his chance to redeem himself during Game 3 of the Hurricanes series. With many of the defensive players out with injuries, Nemec got called back into the lineup.
Nemec not only played well in all the games, but he thrived defensively and regained all his confidence. Of course, Nemec got the top highlight for the Devils this postseason, when he scored the 2OT winner in Game 3 to avoid the Hurricanes sweeping the series, and allowing the team to fight another day. Trading him after that performance and run, would not only make the organization look awful for doing that, but with that regain confidence, he would thrive for the Canucks, instead of trying to form into a nice defensive piece for a team in the future, that needs a lot of depth due to how injured they were going into the playoffs.
The Devils just signed top prospect Arseniy Gristyuk to his ELC this past Tuesday, so there should be no reason for the Devils to trade him. Gristyuk is prepared to head to training camp to try and fight for a spot on the 2025-26 roster and will most likely start in the AHL to begin his tenure next season.
But, for a second, why would the team trade Gritsyuk to get Quinn Hughes? The Devils are trying to impress people in the offseason and want to be in a win-now mode, so they trade a player with good talent, but little to no ice time, to prove themselves to get a quality player. This kind of thinking wouldn’t be the first time the Devils have had this thought.
The Timo Meier trade had the same logical idea: the Devils parted with Shakir Mukhamadulin to get Timo. Mukhamadulin barely had ice time with the Devils, and Mukhamadulin has been doing great with the Sharks. So the Devils will never trade Gristyuk, considering how good of a forward he can be for this team, it’s still interesting to think about how sometimes general managers will choose talented top guys in the league, instead of young guys with talent to prove.